Oswestry Food and Drink Festival

This year we visited the festival as returning visitors full of expectations of a good time and we were not disappointed. So, to backtrack, we discovered Oswestry as a place to visit in the Spring of 2013 and went there several times over the next few months. Oswestry is a relatively unchanged market town but has modern shopping stores like Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's, Boots and Costa Coffee. Our visit in July of 2013 was the same plan as before but we were delighted to find the street full of vendors selling all kinds of food and drink. We had a great time sampling the fayre and enjoying a lovely warm day, there were even some street musicians playing excellent music. We walked all the way up the Main street turned left at the old Llwyd building and walked up to the market square. We then worked way round to The Post Office and back into the centre. This year we made a planned effort to visit the whole fayre properly.

The fayre was a week later in 2014 and we arrived and parked around 10.30am. I had my camera ready

and we started at the Sainsburys end of the main street. There was an amazing bread stand selling every kind of loaf and I recognised the vendor from last year. Further on was the cheese man with a huge variety of cheeses and then the first of the beer stalls. I tried several beers from each man and all of these samples were free, but they were happy to give them out especially when I then bought bottles from each vendor. They were delicious as I am a great fan of real ale. (If ever the dear reader is up in Scotland then is a tavern in Cawdor near Inverness that sells Mcgregors ale. I am sure it is available elsewhere but a finer richer beer you will not find. Just a by the by.) So back to the festival...

Close to the heart is the main tent that provides information about the festival, a sort of tourist information centre where polite ladies can tell you everything about what is going on. We stopped there for quite a while and picked up several brochures including the very useful map of the town and a list of all the participants. S far we had spent much of our time on Cross street but there was still the whole of Bailey to cover. I turned away from the information tent and spotted the truck that carried the oxygen tanks that were being used to blow up the balloons. Last year the balloons were green but this year they are pink. It is now August 13th as I write and the balloon is still hanging in my office although I will confess I have filled it up again by carefully not completely tieing the balloon end off. A trick I learned as a kid. Be careful if you do this because the weakened balloon can eventually pop unexpectedly.

Time for a break and we headed into Costa's. Now I know this is not strictly part of the fayre but these

shops actually are quite quiet with all the customers eating and drinking outside. So we had no problems finding a table and getting a coffee. We were soon finished and heading back and up on to Bailey street where the vendors continued unabated. We finally found the cupcake stand which had moved higher up this year, the display and assortment of cakes was even better than last year. Then more cheese, more beer until we reached the square and there was my olive man from France. A bigger display of olives you will never see and we bought our fill. Higher again into the square and this is where much of the fresh fruits and vegetables are sold.

We returned back down the hill via Willow street and came back to the centre before heading back down Cross Street to complete our shopping at Sainsburys. More than anything else the festival tells the story of what a wonderful town Oswestry is, how friendly are the people and how proud they are of their little part of England that is still not sure if maybe it is really Welsh. I would recommend a visit by anyone if they are ever in this corner of Shropshire and especially at the time of the Food and Drink Festival.